Kingston parkrun is now set to return later than hoped following news that the government's roadmap out of lockdown has been delayed by another month.

The parkrun charity has said that it aims to re-start its 5k races on Saturday 24 July, rather than June 26 as originally planned.

This will be disappointing news for fans of Kingston parkrun as no 5ks have taken place for fifteen months due to social distancing restrictions made necessary by the pandemic.

In a blog post dated Tuesday 15 June the charity said: "A huge amount of work has been done in recent weeks to ensure we have permission to return from the large majority of landowners.

"Whilst this delay is disappointing, we respect the fact that a significant number of these permissions were contingent on the country moving into Step 4, and we will therefore target a new reopening date of Saturday 24 July."

Parkrun has now written to landowners across the UK encouraging them to support the return of the event in July.

The move follows a government announcement on Monday 14 June that it will be delaying stage 4 of the roadmap out of London .

The original end date was Monday June 21, which would have allowed nightclubs to open and relaxed more social distancing rules.

But following a rise in cases of covid-19 across the UK including the borough of Kingston the government took the decision to delay re-opening until more people have had their covid jabs.

The recent surge in cases has been driven by the Delta variant of the virus, which is 40-80% more spreadable than other strains.

[L+] Surge testing [.L] is currently taking place in Kingston borough and walk-in vaccination centres have been set up at Kingston University and Hawks Road .

To keep up to date with all our latest stories from Kingston sign up for our weekly newsletter at the bottom of this story